13 Projects to Continue in Impact HUB’s Incubator

13 Projects to Continue in Impact HUB’s Incubator

The Progress Pitch evening of Impact Incubator took place on Friday, October 14th in Bratislava Impact Hub’s venue, and 13 of 22 projects made it to the next round of the program.

Supporting social impact

The second year of Bratislava’s Impact HUB Impact Incubator program supported by Nadačný fond Telekom was crowded with inspirational projects from various fields. Generating revenue is a crucial thing for business, but to participate in the the Impact Incubator, the goal should be wider in terms of public good or social impact. The idea of Impact Incubator is to bring solutions that might have a deeper meaning for the whole community. That’s why it came out with two categories the projects could have applied for: Technology for Good and Social Business.

Impact Incubator – Animath

The biggest Slovak incubator program for business ideas closed the application round by the end of August. From all the applicants, 35 projects were invited to validate their ideas with the HUB founders. Eventually, 22 projects made it to the first round of the Incubator where they had a chance to work hard on creating business plans, as well as to develop their basic business skills. All the workshops and consultations during the first round are for free. The organizers ask neither for fees, nor for an equity in the company. Well, to be precise, it’s free in terms of money. It’s definitely not free in terms of hard work, sacrifice, time and energy.

Progress Pitch Evening

All the 20 projects (Vascovery hasn’t found their market, though an interesting project; Zlavnenka didn’t make it up to Progress Pitch evening due to personal and health reasons) had the opportunity to present in front of the jury consisted of Tatiana Švrčková (Nadačný fond Telekom), Lucia Šicko (Pixel Federation), Branislav Šmidt (Impact HUB), Juraj Palovič (Impact HUB), Noro Maur (Nadácia Pontis) and Rasťo Kuciak (C.A.A.S.). Each founder had 5 minutes for the presentation followed by 3 mins Q&A round.

Based on the three criteria – the level of presentation, the level of the business plan and the progress made thanks to participation in the program – the jury had a tough time selecting the best projects, considering the time they were discussing it behind the closed door. Eventually, they decided to give a green light to 11 projects, with additional 2 which received a wild card by the HUB founders. You can find the whole list at the end of this article.

Impact Incubator Progress Pitch Winners

What comes next?

The following month will be aimed at presentation skills and funding. The projects will participate in workshops with experts covering different areas of business. To name some of the workshops, we definitely should mention “How to get an investor” (Jaroslav Lupták from Neulogy Ventures), “Crowdfunding in Slovakia” (Igor Polakovič from StartLab) and “Presentation Skills” (Lukáš Bakoš from Maxman Consultants). The participants are going to work hard on the main goal to win the Incubator thanks to the final pitch presentation at the event on November 15th with potential investors sitting in the audience.

Impact Incubator – Karmadilo

The list of projects that have been qualified to the next round

Social Business Category

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